4On June 11, 2013, Edward Snowden exploded into the public consciousness. In the days leading up to his self-imposed unmasking, the whistleblower had been the source of revelations about mass surveillance operations ran by US spy agencies.
Much of Snowden's story has been retold in the six years since. Laura Poitras, one of the original journalists who reported on Snowden's cache of documents from Hong Kong, produced the documentary Citizenfour, using video footage from his initial media interviews. And his story appeared on the big screen in the form of Snowden in 2016.Despite the former CIA staffer and NSA contractor contributing to both productions, they avoid much of Snowden's personal life. Much of his life before becoming known for revealing the PRISM (and other) surveillance programmes to the world has been shrouded in mystery. That is until now. His new memoir, Permanent Record, aims to plug some of the gaps about his backstory.The book, due to be released on September 17, charts his journey from North Carolina, as a child and teenager obsessed with hacking to his asylum in Moscow. As you might expect from a former intelligence analyst, much of the material has been carefully handpicked. While it may be Snowden's most personal revelation yet, it is still guarded."The decision to come forward with evidence of government wrongdoing was easier for me to make than the decision, here, to give an account of my life," he writes in the preface. If you're looking for a book packed with new revelations of mass surveillance, this isn't it. (He destroyed cryptographic keys giving him access to the NSA documents before leaving Hong Kong).Around half of the memoir is devoted to Snowden's life before working in the intelligence community, which he joined after a short stint in the army during his early 20s. Much of his family worked within the US government before he joined: his grandfather in the FBI, father in the Coast Guard and mother in the NSA.Once you're through the formative parts of his life, which aim to contextualise his ultimate decision to take documents from the NSA facility in Hawaii where he was working, the title becomes akin to a spy thriller. If the revelations that came from Snowden were explosive, his recounting of their disclosure is a crescendo. Everything builds to the moments where he anxiously waited for journalists to arrive at his hotel room to hand over the top secret documents and the subsequent rush to find a safe location, involving a brush with Russia's FSB, in the aftermath of their disclosure.Although it is unlikely to change anyone's mind about Snowden's actions, Permanent Record is the whistleblower's own attempt to tell his story. There's little detail of his secretive life in Moscow, although he does reveal his partner Lindsay Mills moved to the country three years ago and they have since married, but there are also warnings about our technological future. Here are some key takeaways from the title.Rubik's cubes were used to smuggle data out of the NSAIn 2016's Snowden, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who plays the whistleblower, uses a Rubik's cube with a memory card placed inside one of its blocks to get documents out of the secure NSA facility. Snowden told the film makers to include the scene but never disclosed to them if it really happened. It did.He writes that he used mini- and micro-SD cards to take data from the NSA – but does not explain how he copied the information to the devices or encrypted it. The SD cards could take a whole day to be filled with data and encrypted. He stored them in Rubik's cubes, in his sock, and "at my most paranoid, in my cheek, so I could swallow it if I had to". The cubes were used as a way of distracting staff members and acting as a talking point.The CIA warned everyone about mass surveillanceMonths before Snowden's disclosures, he says the CIA's then chief technology officer Ira 'Gus' Hunt gave a speech at a tech conference in New York. His slides and presentation, which anyone could attend for $40 (£32), said the CIA was trying to collect all information and keep it forever. "It is nearly within our grasp to compute on all human generated information," he said during the presentation. Snowden says the talk was barely covered by the press at the time and the video, where journalists were told their smartphones could be tracked when they were turned off and all communications captured, was only viewed a handful of times on YouTube.The first thing Snowden hacked was timeAs a boy, Snowden changed all the clocks in his parents' home so that he could stay up late. Later hacks included adding extra lives to games he was playing.Moscow's cold weather is a blessingSnowden now lives in Moscow with his partner Mills. There's little detail given on his life but there are a few processes he follows. He says whenever he goes outside he tries to change his appearance, wearing different glasses is an example that's given. He also says he'll change the rhythm and pace of his walk – gait analysis can detect people based on their movements – and, he says, a hat and scarf "provide the world's most convenient and inconspicuous anonymity."A warning about cloud computingCloud computing has almost become ubiquitous: personal files as well as those owned by businesses are stored within centrally owned storage systems (think Google Drive, Dropbox and Microsoft's OneDrive. They'e convenient for users as files have become accessible anywhere, but Snowden warns there's little thought given to the passing on of our data. "When we choose to store our data online, we're often ceding our claim to it," Snowden writes. "Companies can decided what type of data they will hold for us, and can willfully delete any data they object to".NSA officers looked at your nudesWithin the NSA's headquarters, analysts who were trawling through the vast data collections on individuals would tell others when they came across nude photos. "Intercepted nudes were a kind of informal office currency," Snowden writes. He says staff bragged at finding naked images as they showed them to colleagues when using the XKEYSCORE data tool. The one thing he quickly learned from the tool was that "nearly everyone in the world" who has been online has watched porn.The biggest danger is still to comeThe refinement of artificial intelligence, used in everything from Google's search systems to facial recognition technology, remains one of Snowden's biggest concerns. Surveillance cameras could be made to act like an "automated police officer," which hunts suspicious activity without being prompted to. Snowden talks of a vision where all laws could be enforced by automated systems, which lack context and treat everything as a black-and-white scenario."It's difficult to imagine and AI decide that's capable of noticing a person breaking the law not holding that person accountable," he writes. "No policing algorithm would ever be programmed, even if it could be, toward leniency or forgiveness." More great stories from WIRED💩 Japanese self-cleaning toilets are conquering the West📱 The new Android 10 features that will transform your phone📖 The best sci-fi books everyone should read🍫 The foods you'll really need to stockpile for no-deal Brexit♻️ The truth behind the UK's biggest recycling myths Get WIRED Weekender, your at-a-glance roundup of the most important, interesting and unusual stories from the past week. In your inbox every Saturday by 10am. by entering your email address, you agree to our privacy policy Thank You. You have successfully subscribed to our newsletter. You will hear from us shortly. Sorry, you have entered an invalid email. Please refresh and try again.